Spam and spam filtering

[#1]

Hi,
Thanks very much for your reply. Unfortunately, this is my catch-all mailbox - it gets all the crap that is sent to all the addresses made up from my domain(?). I'm currrently getting about 120 spam emails an hour. This doesn't particularly bother me as my genuine email account probably only gets 2 or 3 spam emails per 24 hours. What I do get is an email from Plusnet having a whinge when the catch-all mailbox ends up very full >20,000 mails.
What i can't understand is why me tagging the spam as emails asSpam doesn't seem to reduce their number - they tend to have a common theme - Rolex is popular at the moment as is the girth and length of penises/

[#2]

Plusnet have promised to save up for a Spam filter,  So far they have not found one that works cheap enough.  I would suggest they redirect their mail through Hotmail, Yahoo or Freeserve as their filters are 99.9%.  I notice Sky.com have transfered their mail server through Google mail which is another effective server.
All it needs is for someone to invite Plusnet into  Gmail and then we can all redirect thro' theirs.  Meanwhile my new Rolex has just given up so I don't want to replace that with another crappy make.or perhaps I should not have believed the advert.
Keep trying Plusnet!
Happy New Year.

[#3]

Quote from: Hawks

Yes, just how difficult can it be to spot word such as "viagra" and "penis" and filter them?

Filtering for specific words would be easy BUT filtering specific words for specific users is much more difficult. For example, there are loads of people who do buy Viagra online and are signed up for promotional e-mails from those websites so, for those people, e-mails promoting Viagra are not necessarily spam.

[#4]

Can someone techie answer me this? Can the IP address of the sender be blacklisted, as opposed to the sending email address, and if so, why doesn't PN do that instead?

[#5]

Again, this morning, almost twice as much unmarked spam than marked spam (which goes straight into the webmail Spam folders).
Unmarked stuff is indistinguishable from marked stuff.
Up till fairly recently most spam was being correctly sent to the webmail Spam folders.
BTW, fake pans are now joining the fake watches.
We're in the process of switching to our free domain name for emails but haven't got it anywhere near sorted out yet, hence still collecting from the addresses the spammers stole. Blackholing is switched on for the catchall, so at least we're spared much of what's probably coming our way.

[#6]

In the last few days I haven't found a single spam which doesn't have either the X-pstn-neptune-rslt: qtine or the X-pn-pstn: Spam 2 headers.

[#7]

Filtering seems a joke at the moment. The most obvious garbage gets through. Marking it Spam makes no difference whatsoever. I'm getting adverts at he moment with Subject lines that are obviously spam ( e.g. AnibalDickConspicuous) and which all reference the same website.
Religiously mark them as spam but they keep on coming. 1 in 245 chance of being spam. Yeah right.
I assume PlusNet have given up with the filtering in the hope and it will be all change after Postini. Please don't tell me its been implemented already.
This has been going on for me since the security breach ( months ago) and I'm sick of it. I'm beginning to think this is the best its going to get.
Just thought I'd get that off my chest - again.

[#8]

Agreed with all the above.  I've just checked my mail this morning and found an avalanche of very obvious spam that the PN spam filters have let through.  Like others, my spam filter is set to divert marked spam, into my Spam folder, but the filters are only trapping about 20% of it, even though it's all pretty much identical.
I'm still faithfully reporting it all as spam but it seems to make naff all difference.

[#9]

I am in the same boat as everyone else with spam e-mails how the PN filters do not pick them up with penis and fcuk-stick I do not know. I also mark them as spam, then delete them but it makes no difference. I opted for the postini trial but I do not believe I am on it as notice no difference to my account set-up. Basically I am getting rather tired of this situation it has been going on far too long. Ever since for me when the engineer closed out the wrong console and left a lot of us open to all and sundry have I relentlessly had spam mail to my account which I can honestly remember never received before that fateful day. For me the trial is too long if it works then it should be installed to address the problem.

[#10]

Critical Path was working fine for me and since it's abandonment the untagged SPAM keps rolling in.
What was wrong with Critical Path anyway?

[#11]

My Dad and I are both suffering from this spam. Outlook has no problem recognising it but despite religiously forwarding the spam back to plusnet there has been no improvment.
I know this is not an offcial forum but the lack of any response speaks volumes for plusnet.

[#12]

Quote from: PJ

[quote The majority of staff, along with the majority of users, are currently on their Christmas breaks.

Well that's great isn't it. Perhaps some of them ought to be in the office sorting out the SPAM problem before you lose all your customers. They might not have a job when they get back. I've been with Force 9 for almost ten years now and this is the first tiem I've found it necessary to complain on the Forums. (I had to register to do so!). The mail system has in my opinion now become unusable. I only have about five mailboxes set up and all the rest gets blackholed (including the catchall). I am still receiving of the order of 40 SPAM emails a day which represents less than 40% of the SPAM and when the non SPAM is only one or two emails per day that is unacceptable. Forutnately I have a Netidentity email account which I am in the process of switching to for all my email. Why can Netidentity stop all but the occasional SPAM (one or two per week) for an email account costing only £10/year and PN can't?

[#13]

Quote from: PJ

The majority of staff, along with the majority of users, are currently on their Christmas breaks.

That may be the case, but for DSPAM to work it needs training on a daily basis - that obviously has not happened over the Xmas break. If there were not enough staff to do this essential routine task they should not have let so many staff be on holiday.

[#14]

Quote from: PJ

If you look here then it's clear that there are people working.

What on earth has been going on at the front desk in the picture?  looks like war has broken out
On a serious note, I also had very quick responses to tickets over Christmas.
Moderators note by Roger (rogerloxton) : Fixed bbcode tag for you

[#15]

I can't see anything - it's telling me that AXIS ActiveX Camera Control can't be registered on my computer. 
Can anyone tell me why please?
Also - I've already received about 300 spam emails already this morning.